ETA: A couple very minor corrections made after the initial posting.
(I continue my three-part series on Alpennian language and names.)
Alpennian Names
As with the underlying parameters of the Alpennian language, the location and common history with its neighbors sets out the basics of the names in use.
Personal names will have some sort of deep-level substrate of both Latin and Germanic compound names with constant infusions of the standard European name pool, introducing names of Christian significance and those that became popular through cultural exchange among the elite levels of society. The latter developed into what one might think of as the “European international name pool”. All of this would be well established long before the early 19th century setting of my novels. In fact, the differences between the personal name inventories in different European countries at that time were relatively subtle, expressed largely in the way individual names developed within the rules of the local language, or how they were adapted when borrowed into local usage. In some ways, I’ve exaggerated the distinctiveness of Alpennian names to emphasize that we aren’t in familiar territory. And I’ve emphasized certain aspects of the Alpennian name pool in non-historic ways to be able to use certain aspects of naming as a class signifier.
The differences between Alpennian names and those of neighboring countries come from two major sources: the Alpennian sound-changes described in the previous section, and the choice of a starter set of name elements. As I noted before, for reasons of geography and (relative) obscurity, I used the obsolete Langobardic language as my jumping off point on the germanic side of the equation. My source lists hundreds of recorded Langobardic names (both male and female) which can be deconstructed into prothemes and deuterothemes (roughly: prefixes and suffixes) as well as supplying some models for non-compounded names and diminutives. These compounding elements have parallels in other germanic languages but the specific sets, frequency, and combinations are distinctive.
In addition to this starting Langobardic name pool, I added in the Latin forms of a vast number of popular names from Christian tradition. Names that would have come into Alpennian use later (by borrowing) were adapted similarly, not because they would have gone through the same historic sound-changes, but on the principle that they would have been modified to fit the Alpennian sound-system at the time they were borrowed. So they may not follow the sound rules strictly, but the result won’t violate the overall patterns of the language.
But it’s not entirely that simple. There might be a certain conservatizing force on Latin names due to the continued use of Latin in liturgical, academic, and legal contexts during the formative periods of the language. Furthermore, names might have been re-introduced multiple times, resulting in inconsistent variants. Names introduced later from the international pool might use that foreign version as a starting point and then might be modified by analogy to conform to Alpennian phonology, or might retain their “foreign” shape as a sort of exoticism. All of these forces give me a little extra freedom in creating the “look and feel” I want for the name pool, as well as providing more variety than a purely mechanical system would.
As the author, I can also use the device of presenting a truly foreign name (of a non-Alpennian character) in the spelling appropriate for that character’s origins, in order to signal those origins. So, for example, the estate manager René LeFevre is signaled as being of French origin by his name (with whatever other implications one might choose to draw about his origins and personal history). Similarly, there’s the example of Jeanne de Cherdillac who is ethnically Alpennian but who married a French exile and self-consciously affects a French name and mannerisms as part of her social “performance”. Similarly Barbara’s Italian fencing master in Chalanz has an obviously Italian name, and so forth. Some of the professors at Rotenek University have names indicating foreign origin, in part as a way of indicating the international character of the institution. This is one technique I use regularly to indicate the cosmopolitan nature of Alpennian culture. Names of figures in Alpennian history may be referred to by the “modern” Alpennian forms of their names, or by Latin versions of those names, reflecting how they would have appeared in records of their own time.
On gender
One of the quirks of how I derived Alpennian names is that the original inflectional endings of Latin and Germanic names were lost (though gender-specific associations of particular compound elements or borrowed names were retained). So many names have identical forms used for both men and women, such as Iulien (from Julianus/Juliana). Alpennian grammar--like other Romance languages--retains clear distinctions between masculine and feminine in many forms. (We see this most obviously in gendered forms of the titles of address.) Alpennian society is not by any means gender-neutral or even particularly progressive regarding gender issues. We see in the aspects of “honor culture” a clearly patriarchal leaning, despite certain legal allowances that are more progressive-leaning. But one of the ways I wanted to distinguish the names from other Romance cultures was in not having women’s names always end in “-a” or “-e”.
I may digress a bit on the topic of gender politics: there are structures in Alpennian society that allow for (although don’t overtly encourage) greater gender equality. For example, inheritance is not strictly by male primogeniture. While the tradition of a semi-elected royal succession is unlikely to have been intended to allow for preferring a female heir over available male ones, it makes that possible. And the same case applies to the inheritance of titles. As the old Baron Saveze notes toward the beginning of Daughter of Mystery when he’s baiting his nephew Estefen, there’s nothing in law barring him from leaving the title to Estefen’s sister Antuniet. Or rather, from commending Antuniet to the prince as his chosen heir. There are legal and traditional guidelines for what they call the heir-default -- the person closest in blood and, by preference, male. But the structures that were originally set up to allow power to pass to the person best suited to hold it have the side effect of allowing for women to inherit that power. So the gender neutrality of Alpennian name forms hold a faint reflection of this potential gender equality on a symbolic level, but it was never meant to be cause and effect in either direction.
On Diminutives and Pet-names
Getting back to naming practices in general, another thing I had to come up with was guidelines for diminutives and pet-forms and whatnot. My basic diminutive suffixes are -ek and -et, but with -et provecting to -ez, as in Annek (from Anna) or Tionez (from Diana). They may also occur with a final vowel (sometimes with the consonant doubled) as in Akezze, Toneke. Toneke is a great example of several principles. The original root is from Latin Antonia and following the usual sound-changes we get Antuniet. (The final -et may either be by analogy to French Antoinette or may be the Alpennian diminutive.) But the pet-form clips off the first syllable leaving “-tun-“ which -- now that it picks up the stress -- “remembers” that the vowel was originally o. So the stem returns to Ton- and now we add an entirely different diminutive ending to get Tonek or Toneke. There are a few other techniques for forming diminutives. This not only gives me a greater variety of options when dealing with the fact that -- as in most European societies of the time -- there should be a lot of focus on a small set of popular names like John and Elizabeth. Now I’ve done this with Elizabeth -- in fact it’s something of a running gag in Daughter of Mystery that there are a lot of Elizabeths running around and most of them have an alternate variant form of the name (like Lissa and Bezza) for everyday use to be able to distinguish them. Similarly in The Mystic Marriage, I have two prominent characters named Anna and this is commented on. And one of them gets a clear alternation between the more formal Anna and the affectionate pet-form Annek that everyone uses -- but not to her face.
Another circumstance where diminutive forms show up a lot is in surnames, because a lot of working-class surnames are derived from patronyms, and very often from diminutive forms used as patronyms (as in English -- though it isn’t always directly appearant there if you don’t know the history of the names).
Names that Don’t Follow the Rules
Now, I have sometimes broken the rules of name derivation, either because a character was very emphatic about wanting a particular name, or because the Alpennian form just semed unesthetic to me, or because the correct Alpennian form seemed to have too modern-American a feel to me. I can usually excuse this as being a reversion to an original Latin form. For example, the correct Alpennian form of Barbara should be “Parber”. But not only had Barbara carried her name from the moment she introduced herself to me, I just don’t like the look of Parber at all. So for whatever reason, she uses a Latinate form. Another example is Anna, where the Alpennian form should properly be simply Ann, but that felt too modern so I went with the Latin form. Part of my backstory for this is that use of Latinate forms is something of a class marker with upper class families often preferring them to the vernacular. This puts an interesting twist on the alternation between the more formal, upper-class Anna and the definitively Alpennian diminutive Annek, which is something the character delibrately encourages to emphasize her Alpennian roots. (This is more relevant to events in The Mystic Marriage, so I’m being a little cagy on details.)
Names and Class
I’ve touched a little bit on class issues in names. I wanted to create some clear class markers both for given names and surnames, though I don’t expect the average reader to pick up on them necessarily. It just helps in creating a consistent and distinctive “feel” that helps with worldbuilding. The ways in which I did this aren’t necessarily historically sound in terms of how name pools developed. In general, Alpennian working class people will have names that derive from Germanic roots (that is the Langobardic name pool that I used to create my linguistic “look and feel”) plus the most common of the Christian-origin names, but often using Alpennian diminutives. So, for example, when Barbara says that, whoever her father was, he wasn’t some “Mefroi Iannik” (using the working-class title “mefroi”), she’s emphasizing that he wasn’t of low birth, with Iannik (an Alpennian diminutive of John) standing in for the “common everyman”. The kitchen servants in the Fulpi household have names like “Luzza” and “Gaita” (from germanic roots) or “Aggy” (a pet-form from Agnes). Middle-class given names are more likely to be from the traditional “pan-European” name pool, both of names of Christian significance (especially saints’ names) and popular international names like Richard and Frederick. Upper-class given names draw on this same pool, but also include more recent borrowings from other cultures like Charluz (an Alpennization of Charlotte) or classical names (like Tionez, which is an Alpennian diminutive of Diana).
It is very common for the reader to encounter working-class people only by their surnames. (I’ll get into class dynamics regarding address and reference in the next section.) This isn’t always apparent because, as noted above, the most typical form of working-class surname is taken from a patronym and therefore may look very similar to a given name. (In fact, there are certain characters where I haven’t yet determined whether the name I’ve used for them is a given name or surname.)
Upper-class surnames are typically derived from proper names of places, originally indicating ownership of the land indicated. To generate these names, I started out with the earliest identifiable forms of place names in the general region of south-east France, north-west Italy, and Swizerland, and then applied Alpennian sound-change rules to them. There are also some upper-class surnames deriving from occupations or offices that would have held appropriate status. For example Chazillen comes originally from “castellanus”, someone responsible for the administration of a castle. There’s a certain snobbishness revolving around upper-class surname origins and their relationship to landed titles. Generally older titles will be held by someone who has a surname different from their title, simply due to the way they changed hands down the years. Having a title identical to your surname is generally a marker of a relatively recent elevation, as it either means that the title has been created fresh or that a family with a declassé surname has adopted the title as their surname when receiving it. A surname deriving from a more descriptive place-name (rather than a proper name) such as “Old Mill” (Vezemul) is generally a marker for middle-class origins (or lower), and similarly for surnames derived from working occupations. But there’s a fair amount of overlap at the class margins due to historic mobility.
The final part of this essay will cover forms of address and reference and issues of class dynamics and courtesy in how people speak to and of each other.
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